If you’re a social media user, and especially if you’re a member of a Facebook group, then you’ll often see links to buy products and services from people you’ve never heard of.

Social media is, in the first instance, a social channel. So selling on it isn’t going to be that successful, right?

Wrong.

For years I’ve advised people we train to avoid being overly ‘salesy’ when you chat on social media because your audience will hate you for it. But over the last few weeks I’ve been posting links to my ‘stuff’, and so have a few of my clients.

And it’s worked.

Before I go any further, this isn’t some clickbait system or an overnight success story – this is a wake up call!

If you’re struggling to get sales from social media and you’ve posted links into Facebook groups, on LinkedIn or automated them on Twitter then I’ve got some news for you.

There’s no such thing as an overnight success

At the beginning of this month we launched the Spaghetti Social Media Summer Camp. It’s a totally online training system, built around a private Facebook Group. It’s really new and exciting for us and sign-ups have been coming in from around the world.

A lot of the orders came from social media and I did post a lot of links out there to tell people about it.

But it wasn’t an overnight success.

In 2009 I joined Twitter. People I met way back then then joined up for our Summer Camp in 2017!

In 2013 I quit my job and started an agency with Jo. People who know Jo and now us, signed up.

In 2014 I joined 4Networking and people from 4Networking joined.

In 2015 I gave a talk on social media and people who heard me talk signed up.

In 2016 we gave training workshops, and attendees from those are booked in.

Friends, colleagues and connections of people we’ve trained have signed up because they’ve heard good things.

At the beginning of 2017 we met someone at an expo we exhibited at. We chatted, they played our buzzwire game and then gave us their business card for the prize draw. They went onto our email list and despite following up with them, they didn’t book on to a workshop. When they saw the SSMSC launch they watched the live and then booked online. This was the right thing for them, at the right time.

So it’s not an overnight success. The link on Facebook is sometimes the final tipping point. That’s why we track everything we do.

Trust takes time…

Forget B2B, B2C, A2Z… it’s all H2H and it always has been. You’re a human trying to sell to another human. You can not, and should not, ever forget that humans take their royal time to make a decision.

Everything has to be right and the trust has to be there. Over time you can build trust. And then when the time is right they will buy your stuff. Not before then.

Trust takes a lot more time than posting a link on Facebook. It worked for me this month because for months and years previously I’d built up trust with my followers and readers.

Give value first and then ask for the sale

Sex before coffee anyone?

I heard a great talk by Ryan Diess recently where he compared marketing to a romantic relationship. He talked about the possibility of having sex before coffee. It can happen in your marketing; people buying from you off the first interaction.

But he said that those who do the sex before the coffee rarely have more sex. Meaning that loyal and regular customers often need to be woo’d if you’re going to see them long term.

Giving value first in the form of good content, free content, social media exchanges, videos and Facebook Lives will give value to your audience, email list, and your Googlers.

Take the time to get this content out there and keep it going out there so you have a good foundation for trust building, for that moment when you ask for the sale. That means being genuine and helping – this isn’t about being fake.

Get the right pitch in the right place

Selling ice to Eskimos might be possible in a sales manual, but I doubt it’s possible in real life. What you sell and where you sell are paramount to the success of your sales.

Many of the people who booked onto our Summer Camp are on our email list. We know that most of our list are small business owners or marketing people as we meet them at networking events. Therefore, we know that what we offer (in content, value and eventually products) needs to be relevant to them.

A lot of those sales came because the trust was there but also the product was right for them. We got sales from posting links into groups because we’d spent the time in those groups and they knew us, and the product was right for that group, too.

Post and run? More like stroll, talk and drop hints…

We got a lot of sales from Facebook Groups. Usually just posting a link into a group doesn’t work. Rarely does anyone click through to our workshops from a ‘post and run’ link spamming exercise.

In fact rarely do we even consider it, let alone do it! This is where some network marketers fail, because they’ve been taught to post links to as many groups as possible. But without developing relationships there’s no strong people to want to respond.

We spend time in the groups just being part of the community. We’ll help folk with social media questions, post content or topics about social media and marketing, and try to be the ‘Go-to’ people in the group.

Again, this is all about trust and value and genuinely being there as part of the community.

I don’t see the groups that I’m in as a place to sell. Most of the time I just enjoy being there, having a laugh, and helping people when I can.

When we posted about the SSMSC we shared a link to a Facebook Live and invited people to hear about our exciting news.

We then told them WHY we were doing it, and how they could get involved.

I suspect most tuned in because they trusted us enough to watch it. Just like I said in this video – it takes trust for someone to stay watching a video (as well as intrigue and interest). Time is a valuable commodity.